by Warren Read
MORE PRAISE for ONE SIMPLE THING
“A twisting, twisted tale full of well-developed characters and dense setting, One Simple Thing is a story that will hold you in its grip until the satisfying end.”
—JESSICA BARKSDALE INCLÁN, author of The Burning Hour and When We Almost Drowned
“This tense, layered story brings us into the world of hardscrabble folks who are fighting and often failing to get by. Opening on a boy’s heart-wrenching journey through the implosion of his family, One Simple Thing flowers into a captivating crime mystery. While tempting to compare Warren Read to classic crime writers, he also vividly chronicles lives lived on the margins, like writers such as Larry Brown or Willy Vlautin.”
—THOMAS KOHNSTAMM, author of Lake City
“Disguised as a tense crime story set in the sparse landscape of the American West, Warren Read’s One Simple Thing is really a probing evocation of loneliness and the ways it skews the search for meaningful relationships. Read writes dialogue as if it were an industrial diamond, sharp and faceted and capable of cutting through granite. Rodney and Otis are as original a set of partners-in-crime as you’ll find in American fiction, and Nadine is trying so hard not to be disappointed in men that she latches onto despair and convinces herself it is hope.”
—KENT MEYERS, author of Twisted Tree and The Work of Wolves
One Simple Thing
WARREN READ
New York, NY
Copyright © 2021 by Warren Read.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
First Edition
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to:
Ig Publishing
Box 2547
New York, NY 10163
www.igpub.com
ISBN: 978-1-63246-120-9
For Barbara, and the road to simplicity.
CONTENTS
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
PART TWO
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
PART THREE
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART ONE
Albany County, Wyoming 1976
“April, month of dust and lies.”
—Naguib Mahfouz, Adrift on the Nile
1
“Would you look at her?” Rodney’s father hovered in the kitchen doorway, jutting his chin to the boy’s mother. “If she ain’t the Queen of Farm Supply, then I don’t know what.”
Her laugh was almost a whisper. She kept her back to her husband and lifted the ladle from the pot, letting the liquid drip like a red waterfall. “Is that meant to be a compliment?” she asked. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”
Rodney’s gut drew in and he steeled himself for another round—another round of the usual moves and strategies, rules confusing and ever-shifting as his parents navigated the vast space between them, each one perfectly finding the other’s buttons along the way. Rodney sat in the center of it all at the square Formica table, his finger rubbing the chipped edge of his plate as he watched the whole thing unfold. They were stationed opposite one another like gunfighters, his father in the kitchen doorway, gripping the casing over his head while his mother crowded the stove, lost in the rising steam of a simmering saucepan.
“If it feels like a compliment,” his father said. “Run with it.” He looked to his son and gave him a little wink.
There was a momentary pause, a stalemate, maybe.
“Today was a perfect one,” Rodney tossed in.
“A perfect what?” asked his father.
“Sunset,” his mother said, grabbing a tea towel and lifting the pot from the stove, walking it over to the table. “Nearly every day, Gil. If you paid attention.”
Some two hours before all of this Rodney sat on his bicycle as always, pausing for the light to hit Kruger’s feed store. It was something he’d had to time right, but it was worth waiting for. Because when it finally happened, over half the storefront lit up like a bonfire and Rodney felt the rush bloom from his knees to his shoulders. It was only the late afternoon sun, but there was a kind of magic in the way it hovered just below the western tree line, its rays breaking through the topmost branches to land squarely on the paned glass in a white blaze. At the loading bay, a big flatbed truck pulled in and was backing up to the feed store platform, taps on the horn giving a warning. Two Mexican workers, whose names Rodney had not yet learned, appeared from nowhere to stand on the dock and wave the rig in with their thick, bare, arms and gloved hands, all yips and hollers and echoing whoops.
Rodney stuffed the last of a Hershey bar into his mouth and tossed the wrapper onto the ground, coasting on his bicycle along the rutted road to the corner, to the lone traffic light that blinked yellow over Charlotte Street. The wrinkled cloth banner sagged beneath the cable that ran from post to post, stars and stripes pocked all over like it was a disease. Hope Celebrates the Bicentennial, 1776-1976: a lazy suggestion for cars to pause, he guessed, to consider for a few seconds all the lives that might be trapped in this thumbprint of a town. He straddled the bar and worked the handlebars, zeroing in on the feed store, the sun’s glare and the rusted, corrugated front. At the busiest time of day, a person might need to wait out three or four cars before crossing Charlotte safely. For most passing drivers, though, both the light and the town were nothing more than an inconvenient tax on their brake pads as they traveled the 230 toward Laramie.
He pedaled across the street and over the gravel lot to the south side of the building, where he locked his bike to the downspout before walking back around to the front door and going inside. Behind the main counter, his mother sat on her high stool, a hand-written nameplate pinned to her blouse, thumbing a spiral notebook that was splayed out in front of her.
“Staring at the sun?” She did not look up from the pages.
“Just for a second.”
“You’re late.”
“Hardly.”
“Hardly’s enough. It’s also enough that I stuck my neck out to get you this job. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make me look like an ass to my boss.” She got up then and walked to the end of the counter where she snatched the push broom from the corner. “Be thorough,” she said, swinging the broom over the register.
It was a lousy five bucks to sweep up the entire warehouse floor from corner to corner—nowhere near a fair deal, but what could he say? Twelve-year-olds desperate for pocket money didn’t get the luxury of whining or negotiating, not in an armpit place like Hope, Wyoming. Hope: a town, Rodney decided, that was not only poorly named, but proof that even God needed a place to dump all the shit he didn’t get right. With the broom, he moved past the wall of windows toward the side doorway, where the echo of voices knocked around out in the loading bay like cow bells. And as he got to the doorway, there in the space that led from the open loading dock to the warehouse behind, he saw it.
On the opposite side of Charlotte, parked beside the high chain link of th
e 76 station, was the midnight blue Impala, its black top catching the very last of the day’s sun in a single stripe over the door. A white-shirted elbow poked out of the open driver’s side window like a flag.
“It’s him.” His mother had come from behind the counter to stand beside Rodney, her shoulder almost touching his. She stared out the open bay in the direction of the gas station. “Tell me this isn’t the first time you’ve noticed it.”
“I never saw him sitting over there,” Rodney said, and that was true. There were drive-bys now and then, but those had always been by chance. He guessed, anyway.
“Now you have. Just ignore him. Get your work done and go on home and don’t say anything about it.”
Rodney leaned back from the doorway. “What’s he doing there?”
“God knows why your father does what he does half the time.” A man in a fat, red beard appeared from the rear of the store, a discovery of rubber boots and rain gear cradled in his arms. Rodney’s mother straightened up and quickly returned to the register, a smile stretched tight over her face as if someone had pulled a string from her back. “Looks like someone’s hoping for a change in the weather,” she said.
“Praying for it, Rosie,” the man said. He dropped the gear onto the counter and scratched at his chin, his fingers disappearing into the orange tangle of fur. “I’d give my last born kid to be able to use these.” Rodney’s mother gave a worried laugh, and the man added, “You ain’t seen my last born.”
“Oh, Norris, I believe I have,” she said. “All the same, a day of rain would sure be a blessing.”
“From those pretty lips to God’s ears.”
Rodney’s mother punched her fingers at the register, smile radiating a stripe of pink gums over her teeth. She was, it seemed to Rodney, a woman who managed to look best when she tried the least, when she let her thin, dark hair fall loose from whatever ponytail or bun she had forced it into. Here she was now, stationed behind the counter of another dusty county feed store in another farm town, passing chatter back and forth between herself and all the hayseed townspeople who wandered in. It was a skill of hers that he both admired and feared, the way she could settle into the space behind a shop counter, rattle off customer names and wrap her hands around a world that only recently had been alien to them.
The red-bearded man gathered up the pile of rubber and canvas, and Rodney’s mother said, “Good luck” and looked back out the open doorway toward the gas station. She gave a gravelly sigh and murmured something that Rodney could not make out. Something about his father, probably.
Certainly, the way she talked about him was different than the way she talked to him. When the three of them were together, she often acted like she was a guest who had been invited at the last minute. His father might be rattling on about Cambodia and the Republicans, or the latest boxing match playing on TV, the merits of Ali vs. Frazier, and she’d hang back from it all, ever the observer. She might go as far as interjecting a laugh or a shake of her head, but more often than not she’d just look away and pretend to busy herself in the kitchen, maybe thumb through the mail or the day’s newspaper, talking to herself in mumbled, broken chatter that Rodney would strain to pick up, thinking perhaps she might actually want to be heard.
Housemaid.
Past due.
Invisible.
Rodney moved from one end of the warehouse to the other, past the hay bales and rolls of chain link, stacks of re-bar and split rails, and mattress-like sacks of grain, the broom handle thumbed to his chest, a haze of dust blooming around him. The guys near the dock had loaded the last pallet of alfalfa pellets into the truck and were horsing around at the forklift, laughing and taking turns punching one another on the arm, and Rodney considered the notion that he could ever be in one place long enough to make a friend like that, or for that matter, that there could ever have been a time when his parents might have been that friendly with one another. Even more, that they could have been so in love that there was no other option than to be with one another. Was it possible? More likely it had been nothing more than one unplanned incident after another. A night of liquor and dancing, in the sweaty basement of a local grange hall. A drive back to somebody’s apartment, or maybe not even that far. This and that, fast-forwarding to the three of them packed into their little house on Smith Street in God’s Dump, Wyoming.
Neither his father nor his mother had ever shared with Rodney the seeds of what would eventually grow into the thing that lived in their living room each night, or crowded around the kitchen table, or hovered on opposite sides of Charlotte Street. And that was fine by Rodney. Because when all was said and done it didn’t really matter how it all started, only that it all seemed to be ending in the way that it was.
Rodney finished up and went back into the store and returned the broom to his mother, who tucked it back into the space at the end of the counter before opening the register and plucking out a five-dollar bill. As he reached to take it, she pulled it back.
“Come here,” she said.
“I’m here.”
She moved closer to the counter. “Come here,” she repeated, and waved him in with a nod of her chin. He stood against the counter and she reached out and pressed her hands to his cheeks, her skin like a heat pad. “I don’t want you to worry about it,” she said, her eyes moving over his face as she talked. “It’s just your dad being your dad.”
“I won’t,” he said. “I know.” He pulled against her hold, though not with any real effort.
She kissed him on the forehead and let him go, and he went out to reclaim his bicycle from the downspout, then walked it around to the front of the loading dock where the whole bay sat empty now, except for the two Mexicans who were sitting on the edge sharing a cigarette and swinging their legs beneath them. Rodney straddled the bar and listened to them for a bit, though he could not make any sense of what tumbled out with all that smoke.
The Impala was gone. Rodney rumbled his bike over the graveled shoulder of Charlotte Street, and broke off down Pine, past CJ’s Grocery and the Soak ’n’ Suds Laundromat that only ever seemed to have the same three people in it, cutting across the highway and into the little tree-lined streets with old-people names like Victor and Clay and Alfred, crisscrossing his way to the strip of little sun-blistered bungalows that hugged the murky drainage creek. The layout of the streets and houses and shops in this place were as familiar to him as any place he’d ever lived. Rackett, Nebraska; Eddy, Colorado, and now Hope, Wyoming—all cut from the same dirty dishcloth. A downtown grid of shops probably hanging on by a handful of coins, a cluttered general store among them. A few rusted silos on the horizon. An old roadhouse somewhere on the outskirts where they could play loud music and not bother the church folks.
When Rodney was nine, they settled for about six months in Pueblo, Colorado, and it was a nice place, with crosswalks and a river running right through. It had a downtown that was big enough that a person could walk from one end to the other every day for a week and still not see the same person twice. Best of all, in the middle was a store that carried only comic books, comics Rodney had never heard of; he would stand in that place for hours after school until the owner, a quiet man who smoked skinny cigars and wore his shirts buttoned all the way to the neck, would flicker the lights to warn of closing time.
As always, though, something happened and they moved on. In his twelve years of life, Rodney and his parents seemed to change homes like some people change from one boring pair of shoes to another, never varying the size or style. For a long while Rodney imagined there must be something they were all running from, and that there would come a day when a policeman would be standing on their porch with a piece of paper in his hand, and they would be taken to his waiting car for one final trip together. It was, at times, an exciting thought. To be able to hear the story at last, the details of the bank robberies or some elaborate jewelry heist while the siren lights flashed over their heads for all to see. But that faded away befor
e long. Because the truth, Rodney decided, was that his father was not running away from anything, but rather running toward something—something that always managed to be just a little bit faster than old Gil Culver.
That evening, the gunfighters resumed their positions in the kitchen, Rodney’s mother at the stove, his father opposite him at the table now, legs stretched out so that his feet pressed against his son’s. Rodney had mentioned the sunset, and his mother seconded it. A momentary diversion. An electric charge seemed to travel over him, though, working its way from his skin down into his muscles.
“I sure as hell can’t do this much longer,” his father suddenly announced, rubbing his fists over his eyes.
“Do what, Gil?” Rodney’s mother said this with a heavy sigh, she the Queen of Farm Supply, dropping mounds of spaghetti noodles on their plates, steam billowing from the pot and clouding her face.
“Do what?” he repeated. “Keep trying to peddle sprinklers in the middle of a goddamned drought, that’s what.”
“It’s what you chose,” she replied. “Moved us five hundred miles for it.”
He sucked in a quick breath and held onto it, as if he was deciding what he ought to do now that he had it behind his lips. He turned to Rodney. “How’s that job of yours?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?” He cocked his head. “A job ought to be more than just ‘fine,’” he said, as if he was living the example. “You spending or saving?”
“Saving,” Rodney lied. It was hard walking past the grocery without stopping in for a little something, a Coke, or a box of sour chews. Plus you never knew when a good comic book issue would show up. Five dollars didn’t stretch far.
“What’s on the horizon? What are you saving for?”
Rodney shrugged his shoulders. “A bike. I guess.”
“You have a bike,” he said.
“I want a ten-speed.”
“What do you need a ten-speed for? Everything from here to the next twenty square miles around us is flat as a board. Don’t throw yourself into a money pit that you won’t be able to climb out of.”